


In Extremis

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: The Odalisque Timestamps [21]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Death, Graphic depictions of dissection, Longing, M/M, Mourning, this was so freaking hard to write damn you noodle, vignettes of sex and violence verse, we love you truly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 07:21:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3801715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Will doesn’t stop speaking, doesn’t stop shaking, delirious with fever and hot and cold all at once. Soon the sobs become genuine tears, and Hannibal’s heart skips and settles in his throat when his boy starts to cry.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>His boy very rarely cries.</i>
</p><p>  <i>And for the first time, the tears do not please Hannibal, they scare him.</i></p><p>What would happen if Hannibal lost his little wolf?</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Extremis

**Author's Note:**

> Short answer? Something like this.
> 
> Our darling beta reader, [noodletheelephant](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/), requested this cruel little number, asking for a ficlet where Hannibal deals with Will's death before he wakes to find him safe and sound.

The fever hits hard and it holds fast, and Hannibal finds that after the second day, nothing is bringing it down enough to give his little wolf comfort. 

He sets him into a lukewarm bath and holds him as Will feebly struggles to climb free, terrified of the cold, _It’s so cold, Hannibal, I’ll freeze_. The water does little to drain away the heat from his boy’s skin, the tightness from his muscles. Does little at all beyond panic Will until Hannibal pulls him free and wraps him in a towel and holds the shaking thing against his chest as Will nuzzles him and whimpers that he’s so hot he can’t breathe.

He gives Will medicine, he gives him herbal remedies and holds him. Words read and pressed and touched to Will’s skin to distract him fall on deaf ears as Will curls into a ball and shivers, pressing his burning forehead to Hannibal’s side. 

Hannibal brings him warm broth and hot tea. He holds a bucket for his boy when he retches both back with sobs and shaking, apologizing despite Hannibal’s soft assurances he has nothing to be sorry for. Will doesn’t stop speaking, doesn’t stop shaking, delirious with fever and hot and cold all at once. Soon the sobs become genuine tears, and Hannibal’s heart skips and settles in his throat when his boy starts to cry.

His boy very rarely cries.

And for the first time, the tears do not please Hannibal, they scare him.

In two days, Hannibal can count the hours he’s slept on one hand, but it hardly matters now. He shrugs away the painful tension in his shoulders. He forces himself to breathe and steady past the exhaustion that makes him dizzy when he stands. Every hitched breath, choking fearful and soft, tears at him like fishhooks beneath his skin, and Hannibal runs a hand over Will’s sweat-damp hair to smooth it from his face, frowning when even this gentle touch is too much.

“The fever will pass,” Hannibal promises. “Soon, little one. You are in the worst of it. I will find something for the pain, and if it does not break by this evening, I will take you to the hospital.”

Will hears him, somehow, and whimpers.

“Yes,” Hannibal answers. Clad in no more than the sleep pants that he put on days ago, Hannibal turns to go. Every step is an agony, when he wants nothing more than to press Will’s sickness into himself and take it from him. Quickly, then, down the stairs to the kitchen - he will warm a broth to steady Will’s stomach against the small dosage of hydrocodone to ease his suffering.

He listens, hearing honed years ago to consider his boy, always, and now more so. Like a mother listening for her baby’s cry, and demanding to know why they’re not making sound. Screaming that she cannot hear her own baby, when the doctors explain that the child is crying, and knowing the voice they claim as hers is foreign. It is not hers. An acute, instinctive knowledge born of shared blood and breath. Hannibal knows his boy by the softest sounds he makes, by his smell, by any sense and at any distance.

He hears the little hitches of breath, the slide of fabric against sensitive, fevered skin as Will works himself into a bundle and then writhes to untangle himself moments later.

He needs to sleep. He needs to sleep and for his body to fight the illness and not hurt him. He needs that, despite his protests and his fears, though even those Hannibal has not heard for many hours. When Will speaks at all it is to voice Hannibal’s name, to grasp out with hot fingers to touch him, reassure, calm.

Upstairs, the boy is shaking, and Hannibal sits behind him to hold him close. He cradles the heavy mug for Will to drink and passes two pills for him to swallow alongside, as he kisses his temple and whispers promises, assurances, love against him until Will’s shaking eases and he trembles into fitful rest.

Hannibal does not. He will not. He cannot sleep, and he tells himself he is capable of fighting it for a few more hours, until nightfall, just a few more hours if even that. He rests his fingers against Will’s cheek to cool the heat from them. He nuzzles into Will’s hair to breathe against his scalp. As much as the thought fills Hannibal with panic, with a snarling possessiveness, he will take him to the hospital. It isn’t their identities, well-established now, it isn’t the money, ever. It is the thought of others touching his boy, opening him when he is too weak to fend them off.

It snares ugly and vicious in Hannibal, and he tucks his head against Will’s own, cheek to cheek, in animal possessiveness. If his little wolf is unwell, he will protect him.

He will fix him again.

He will not sleep until he does.

A waking rest is found, though, as Hannibal’s breath moves in time with Will’s own. A slow, labored rise and fall that he forces his own to match. Up and down. In and out. Slow and steady.

In.

Out.

Slow.

Steady.

Stop.

“Will.”

It’s morning and Hannibal could curse himself for sleeping. His weak human shell succumbing to rest when he had pushed himself so hard to stay up, to stay with his boy. Will rests against him now, cooler, fever broken and body still from the shaking that had torn at him for days. It should be a welcome sight, a good sight, and yet Hannibal’s entire form tenses. He pushes himself up to kneel over his boy, to rest a hand beneath his nose to feel for breath, his other against his wrist for a pulse.

He finds neither, and the next call for him is harsher.

“ _Will_.”

Parted lips and lax expression, and Will looks so small, he looks so small where he lays, hands relaxed and fingers barely curled into his palms, hair still slick with sweat sticking to his forehead, to just over his eye where he lies.

Stop.

The breaths he steadied for Will are gone now, wrenched between ribs that feel too small to hold his lungs. Hannibal lowers himself, to set his cheek against Will’s chest and listen, and the sensation of Will’s skin no longer hot, no longer warm, only the temperature of the room itself tells Hannibal what his ears hear from within his boy.

Nothing.

Not slow.

Not steady.

“Will.”

Stop.

Hannibal sits up again, and forces his mouth against Will’s own. In and out. In and out is what they need again, and Hannibal breathes air into his boy and tries to make his lungs push it out again with fists curled one over the other against his chest. Will’s head tilts aside when he is moved this way and Hannibal murmurs an apology, tilting his chin to bring him right again, to kiss air into him. In and out. Slow and steady.

Nothing.

“Will, please.”

Nothing.

“Please. For me, little wolf. If you are too lazy, let me breathe for you.”

Stubborn boy, he just lays there. He lays there insolent and beautiful and blue, beneath his skin, blue like the ocean rather than golden as the sun, and Hannibal tries so hard and Will refuses, insufferable and insolent, he refuses to breathe again. Hannibal sighs out a laugh, an ugly, wretched noise and presses his palms to Will’s cheeks. He smooths his hair from his face. He begs.

“Enough, Will. Awful boy, I know you hear me. Come, you need a bath, now that the fever’s gone. I won’t have you lying here in your own sweat all day. Will. Enough.”

Will’s head rests still between Hannibal’s hands, so small suddenly, so, so small. His lips are still parted from where Hannibal had pressed them open with his own, tilted barely at the corners as though he’s smiling. He looks so serene, he looks at peace, calm.

But he’s not here.

He’s not here.

How can he be at peace when he is not with Hannibal at his side?

“Little wolf.” A whisper, running like sandpaper over Hannibal’s throat as his breathing draws short, as his eyes widen and burn with how he refuses to blink, because if he blinks he may lose the boy entirely. “Will, please.”

When he bends this time to bring their lips together it is to kiss, deep and lingering and long, Hannibal’s heart hammering between them, coaxing Will’s to join him, to sync up as they always do, as they always have.

Nothing.

Stop.

“Don’t stop, Will, don’t stop, my beautiful boy, not over this,” Hannibal hisses, forehead pressed to Will’s and lips snarled back, teeth bared in pain. “Not over this, Will, you are so strong.”

Will doesn’t listen. He never did, really, only when he chose to or Hannibal’s demands suited him. Hannibal laughs, trembling, his forehead pressing to Will’s chest to nuzzle against his chest and wait for little hands to sift through his hair. He feels his tears only when he turns his face against the dampness, and reaches to lift Will’s hand, and bring it to his cheek. His boy’s fingers stay curled, as if afraid to extend, and Hannibal spreads them with his thumb to sigh against Will’s palm and warm him.

“You did not ask me for this,” Hannibal whispers into his skin. “Awful boy, I did not - I would not have - you aren’t allowed. Do you hear me, little wolf? I told you before, years before, you were not permitted and you waited - you waited, not then when I might have let you go, you waited until now, until I turned away in sleep -”

The sensation of movement beneath Hannibal startles him, but it stops when he does. His own body, quaking out of his control.

He can almost hear Will laughing, the soft lilting little thing that always draws his lip between his teeth, that always brings his eyes just that much brighter, blue and liquid and enormous. He pulls back to watch, to will that little chest to lift, to will those eyes to flicker and open, sleepy and coy.

He would strike him.

He would pull him close to kiss.

He would hold him so close they would become one person.

They already are, two halves of a whole, found after they had been torn asunder and separated by whatever God felt himself threatened.

In every time. In every moment. They would always find each other, always join again.

“Your heart,” Hannibal murmurs, frowning in thought, frowning in consideration, an idea tugging at him, some sick thought that slices through reason and logic; those things don’t matter, they never mattered with them. “You cannot stop a heart that is no longer yours, little wolf. I will have it start again. I will have it start.”

His bones grind against his skin as he stands, digging into each other, quaking weak. For the first time in his life, Hannibal feels old, as if every bruise or wound he’s ever inflicted on another has returned to him and thinned his skin like paper, tearing frailty. Soon he’ll rest, soon he’ll sleep again, but only once he’s given his boy life again. Only once he’s tasted Will, sweet and luminous, once more.

He cradles Will’s head when he lifts him, the arm beneath his knees, and holds his boy against his chest, carrying him downstairs as he has so many times before.

“You should eat more,” Hannibal murmurs, lips pressed to Will’s brow. “You play too much. Have you always been so thin as this? You weigh so little, stubborn boy.” Every breath carries on it words, soft little things pressed to stiffening skin, waiting to feel a wolfish nuzzle against his cheek that never comes.

“You are not being punished. We are going to the basement, but only for a time. I need your help, lazy child, and you will do as I ask. Come,” Hannibal tells him, shoving the basement door open with his foot, “and then we will eat, and return to sleep.”

Silence, still. But not for long. Not as Hannibal lays his boy on the cold table, not when he caresses the side of his face with trembling knuckles and carefully turns Will’s head to rest comfortably, not turn awkwardly and bend as it shouldn’t.

Silence, still, but not forever. Not as Hannibal takes up a scalpel, kissing Will’s cooling cheek as he begins the incision, done so many times he could do it without sight, just by touch, eyes closed and lips pressed to familiar soft skin where stubble tickles warm against his lips. Hannibal laughs, swallowing thick and trying to breathe past the lump in his throat that pulses and grows with every beat of his heart.

“Stubborn boy,” he sighs, “you will not have that beard, little one, you will not have it, I forbid you. But you still try, you still always try, so try for me here, try for me.”

Head down as he watches blood seep from the cut, smooth and thick, but not pulsing, not hot. Spilling merely because Will was peeled away, not because a pulse, a push, expels it.

Hannibal is sleeping on his feet. He is dreaming. He too, is dead. He must be with the way the room swims, he must be with the misery that shakes his hand to cruel unsteadiness. How many times had he dreamt of this, in gleeful perversity - opening his boy to see the parts that made him? Tasting the sweetness of his flesh and spirit, as if his body were a pomegranate swollen with seeds that would spill scarlet down his chin.

He stops at Will’s belly, and the scalpel slips from his fingers with a click to the table, to instead caress the scar that nearly took him, years ago.

“You distract me,” Hannibal tells him. He seeks out something, a headrest, but of course he doesn’t have one, why would he when the basement is more butcher shop than morgue. A quick ascent upstairs, and the whole way Hannibal speaks to Will, tells him that he’ll return in a moment, he does not mean to leave him there, he knows how Will fears it.

The pillow, taken from the couch, settles beneath Will’s head to keep him comfortable, and bare fingers keep his hair from his eyes, lashes long against cheeks grown porcelain pale. Has he always been so? Hannibal thinks of him in flashing bronze and gold, damp from the sea and bright as the sun reflecting off lean muscle and arch bones, smooth skin that seemed hairless but for the wet little thatch between his legs when he stepped bare from the waves.

Hannibal stares at Will’s hand, palm upturned in the groove that runs the perimeter of the table. He presses his own against it, intertwining their fingers to curl together when Will’s hand closes reflexively against his own.

“You will miss the figs, Will.” He strokes his thumb against the side of Will’s hand. “Years, you waited, laying beneath the spindly little tree you insisted upon. Years, and now so close to ripeness -”

Words and words and breathy whispers as Hannibal’s hands work to cut through and separate the ribs, to run over the still-warm organs in Will’s hollow form.

So little, all so little.

He doesn’t wear gloves. He couldn’t. To have a barrier between him and his boy would be unspeakable, unthinkable, and Hannibal bends to whisper against Will’s ear how they will swim together the next evening, how they will return together in warmth and closeness and make love in bed until dawn pulls them to rest.

Will’s heart is heavy in his palm, and Hannibal wonders about his own, wonders if it feels like lead to him alone, or if that is what it is made of until his boy soothes it again and melts it to life. The boy who can bring him to humanity, to divinity, is the boy he now works to return to life as well, pumping his heart for him between shaking hands because Will is too tired to do it himself.

But not forever.

Not forever.

It will beat itself, soon, pulse warm and quick in Hannibal’s hands. It will beat.

“There you are, beautiful boy.”

Hannibal praises him, as he always has whether the words themselves were sweet or scolding. He knew his heart would be fierce and strong, he knew it would be powerful and quick. The muscle moves in smooth striations, rippling beneath his hand, where once it moved with its own electric current, snapping quick and lively. Hannibal looks at the boy’s ribs, cut through, that he nuzzled against more times than he can count. He studies his skin, spread wide, worshipped in blows and kisses both. Every part of him, a wonder, fractions of a half that filled him with youthful energy and boundless affection and glorious violence. Altogether a half that became whole when they found each other, and watched the other panting breathless, blood between their teeth and bafflement in their eyes, back in Baltimore, so many years ago.

Slow.

Steady.

Stop.

He does not leave Will this way, even with his heart snipped gently from its moorings. He does not leave him on the cold table, in the basement that was always meant for punishment. Will’s heart rests in a small dish beside, and with slow moving hands, Hannibal sets the centerpiece of his sternum back in place and begins to stitch, skin meeting skin, not tight enough to pucker nor loose enough to gap. Every pop of the suturing needling through pale skin merits an apology. Every shift of Will’s body to pull the threading snug earns a hum of disapproval for fidgeting so much.

He carries him against his chest, head against his shoulder, with one arm beneath his backside and the other around his back, to return him to bed. He settles the boy against his chest, letting his head loll heavy to his shoulder, turn, on its own accord, to press that soft nose against Hannibal’s neck, and he swallows, thick, just once, before reaching to take Will’s heart into his hands again.

He had promised, once, when his boy had wriggled up close against him, whispering sweet, filthy things into his ear, that he would eat Will’s heart raw. He would not tarnish it with seasoning or oils, he would not do it the disservice of fire or heat when it could so beautifully provide its own.

He had promised, and he fulfills.

He lets his teeth sink into the organ slowly, a deliberate pressure of his jaw rather than a rending, a tearing. He waits for the blood to press past his teeth and swallows as it slicks down his throat. Only then do the sinews part beneath his teeth and he takes Will’s heart into himself.

It is as sweet as he had once whispered to the boy it would be. It is just as strong, as filling and perfect as he had told Will it would be. Hannibal turns his head to press a smeared kiss to Will’s cheek, praising him for this, thanking him for it. Telling him how good he is, what a beautiful boy he is, how peaceful he looks when he rests, and if he waits, Hannibal will rest with him as well, lay beside him with eyes closed and chest barely moving, to be with his boy.

He will.

Because he promised.

He promised.

The sob pulls so hard through Hannibal his entire body shakes with it, heels of his hands pressing hard into his eyes as blood slips between his fingers and down his hand, down to his wrist and lower still. Blood that darkens between his teeth and reddens his lips. Blood that is not meant to be in him, now, but in Will, and he can’t put it back, he doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know why everything he has tried has not worked, he doesn’t know how he had let his boy slip from him like he did. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand.

The next sob pulls the beginning of a scream from him and Hannibal presses against his eyes harder, until Will, standing bare and beautiful behind his eyes, grinning and young and bronzed in the sun, explodes into stars, hand reaching forward and vanishing before Hannibal can take it.

He lays beside his boy, arms clutching that skinny body against his own. One beneath and one above, over the scar that Will survived and the one that will never heal. With every breath that cuts too short in his throat, tears slick his cheeks. With every breath, Hannibal tells himself to let them move in and out. Slow and steady.

Slow.

Slow.

Stop.

Stop.

Stop.

His heart won’t, and Hannibal can’t make it. He tries to still its dull stupid thrum to nothing, he tries to force it to stop its idiot beating in his chest.

“Please,” Hannibal begs, choking on the word. He doesn’t want this but he knows this is his punishment. To feel Will’s body grow flush with decay and fall to pieces beside him. To feel Will disappear to nothing and all he wants is to go with him, to lay here together until they break apart into the atoms that made them, that broken apart long ago find fusion in entropy.

“Please stop,” he pleads with his stubborn heart, as the warmth in his arms grows hot. “I should have taken you to the hospital. I should have. I’m sorry,” he begs. “I’m sorry that the table was cold, I know you hate it, please -”

“- Hannibal?”

He could moan for it. Hearing his voice from the depth of whatever memory his mind is kind enough to dredge up. Hannibal draws another shuddering breath and continues his apologies until he has fallen deep enough into his own thoughts that he swears he can feel little fingers in his hair, over his eyelids, over his lips.

“I’m sorry, I am so sorry -”

“The most tearful apology for sleeping in when we wanted to watch the sun come up this morning,” Will’s voice sounds warm, gentle against him, laughing - cruel boy - laughing at him. “The sun comes up every day, Hannibal, we will see it.” And a nuzzle, that long-awaited, needed, craved nuzzling of his beautiful little wolf, just there against his neck.

Hannibal starts to shake.

His words choke on staggered breath. He is fortunate, in some way, that he managed to make good on his promise before madness broke him. He swore that he would consume his boy, and he did. And if his fate now is to hear Will teasing him until he, too, passes beside him, then it is a sweeter fate - in all its cruelty - than he should be allowed.

“We will,” he swears to the laughing dead. “I will lay with you here until I join you, Will, I -”

“Hannibal,” Will breathes, curious confusion in his voice, as his laughter stills and Hannibal lowers his head to his boy’s chest. Therein, the same heart he consumed, thumping happily against his cheek. There too the same skin but warm now, with no incision or sutures spanning the length of it, though still smeared with the man’s agony, wet and salty.

Stop.

“Will,” Hannibal breathes, and he sits up so fast he’s dizzy with it, staring wide-eyed at the boy beside him.

Will blinks, lips parted, as before, but pink now, not lilac, eyes wide and open, blue and alive and following Hannibal’s movements with careful consideration before he sits up as well and presses his palm against Hannibal’s cheek, wiping the tears away with a swipe of his thumb.

“Hey,” he sighs, small, young, smiling when Hannibal looks at him again, when he blinks and more tears seep down his cheeks, and Will doesn’t know what to do. He has never seen Hannibal this way, he has never seen him shed tears before, has never seen him look so pale and frightened before heavy strong arms settle over his shoulders and pull Will close against him.

Will makes a sound, little and confused, and turns to nuzzle against Hannibal’s hair. “‘m here,” he mumbles. “I’m here, Hannibal, right here. Did you dream?”

He dreamt. He suffered. His whole body aches with it and he tilts his nose against Will’s cheek, turning his face aside and drawing in a breath that sets him to shaking. Life, sweet and florid and warm - his little wolf, whose scent he would know in a thousand, a million, and he thought lost to sour decay. Slender arms curl around him and Hannibal’s body heaves, wracked with a stiff sob into soft curls that cling to Hannibal’s damp cheeks.

“You are not allowed,” Hannibal breathes, raw words made rough in the strangling tightness of his throat. “Do you understand? Never, Will, you are not allowed to die without me.”

Will’s hands slip to Hannibal’s hair and hold him close as he slowly settles back into bed. He lets Hannibal rest atop him, breathing still shuttered, still hitching and thick with tears and sobs that Will kisses away with reverent lips and soft assurances.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promises, setting his knees up to support Hannibal who crawls closer against him and holds Will tighter. “Nowhere,” Will promises. “Not without you.”

Soft promises that fall for the moment on ears deaf from relief and terror. Will kisses Hannibal’s skin until he can turn his head enough to kiss against the salty tears beneath his eyes, run his knuckles there instead as he kisses over his forehead.

“I don’t want to get out of bed today,” Will murmurs, a suggestion and promise both as he nuzzles more and more against the man he loves so much his chest aches with it.

“Beautiful boy,” Hannibal whispers, rubbing his nose alongside Will’s. Their lips brush together but do not close, he can’t, not when the metallic taste of blood and cold grit of muscle still sends a shiver through the man. Instead, he simply breathes against Will’s mouth, savoring the sensation of little breaths that warm the terror from him. “I want to go, to the beach, the garden - I want to see you swim, and play, please -”

“Okay,” Will agrees, nodding, blue eyes blinking wide as he takes in the man so near, before finishing his kiss for him. Their mouths join for a breathless moment, just that, before Will strokes Hannibal’s hair again, rubs his back, a wonderful welcome warmth against the man who can do no more than revel in it.

“With me,” Hannibal asks, and in the light of morning, he hates his own neediness but in his loathing, even still, he can’t fight it. “Always with me, even then,” he insists as finally his heart begins to slow. Steady.

Will promises he will, and Hannibal settles to his chest again to let the last tears slip free, and listen to Will’s breath beneath him.

In.

Out.

Slow.

Steady.

And now, neither stops.

**Author's Note:**

> This hurt to write, this really, really hurt us to write.


End file.
